He shrinks. “I meant—”
I catch his hand in mine, flip it so his wrist is exposed, and rest my lips there, on that thin layer of skin.
“Four,” I say. “I’ve been with four people. A rather even split ofcommitted relationships and casual arrangements, but I was never flippant with them. Most other areas of my life may be chaos embodied, but I was always rather confident in this one.” I think for a beat. “That sounds cocky. Not confident in a gross way. Just sure that I know what I’m doing. The relationships I had were a bit… transactional? That sounds more heartless than it was, but it was about mutual satisfaction over anything else. None of the scandal or romance that the tabloids craved.”
Hex lifts one brow, sardonic. “So is that what we’re doing? Mutual satisfaction?”
“No,” I say. Simple, self-contained.
I’m fully transfixed staring up at him. It’s equal parts horrifying and tantalizing to watch in real time as he grasps the power he has over me.
There was a layer of separation with everyone else. A firm line drawn, like with my roommate, where it wasn’t anything serious; or the stalking knowledge that it was doomed, like with Lily. But with Hex, any firm line feels like a path to follow, and any stalking knowledge feels like a whisper augmented with promise and I should be speaking in respectful murmurs and begging permission for every brush of contact. He strips me down to this squirming creature of awe and desire and uncertainty, like everything is new and permanent.
His shoulders bow a little. His hand slips down, rests on my forearm.
“Oh,” he whispers.
“So I am perfectly happy,” I say quickly, “with whatever you want. Kissing or lying together on the couch or nothing at all, and we could—”
“I don’t want nothing.”
My lips slam shut.
“I didn’t mean to imply anything about your reputation,” he says. “My incredulity was not because of you at all. I am—I don’t—” He sighs, an abrupt, heavy exhale. “I’m not good at this. I don’t have a large social circle. Honestly, this time here, around you and Iris andKris, has been more interaction than I’ve gotten in… years, outside of school.”
“Years?” I try hard not to look too pitying, but my heart breaks. He seems to brace for some kind of pity too, so I force up a smile, rub a circle into his thigh. “Well. A few weeks with us, and you’ll be begging to go back to solitude.”
“Oh, never solitude. My brothers refuse to give me that. But—”
“Wait.” My smile turns amused. “Are you saying your main source of socializing is with three nine-year-olds?”
Hex’s lips thin as he fights his own smile. “And functions for Halloween and Día de Muertos. Don’t make it sound so pathetic.”
“It’s not pathetic. It’s adorable.”
His blush is fast and scarlet. “I regret saying anything. I certainly do not wish to speak about my brothers right now anyway. I—” He seems to remember what it was we’d been talking about, and while I would have no problem spending the next hour before the concert listening to him tell me about his family, the intensity of his expression changes, grows richer, warmer.
Another pause, then Hex puts his thumb on my bottom lip and holds it there. I grind my teeth shut, aching against the heavy thud of my heartbeat, both of us still a bit sleep-soft and disheveled. He could say anything he wants with his thumb on my mouth like this.
“I’ve… been with one person.” His eyes fix on the couch beside my head. “And it wasn’t—we didn’t—we didn’t do much, but what we did was not preceded by nearly as much talking as you and I are doing.”
I translate that and can’t stop the flare of possessiveness that has my hands bearing down on his thighs again. “It should have been. You deserve to know exactly what we’re doing and what we both want.”
“You do love talking.”
“And it makes you uncomfortable?” I’m trying to read his body language.
He drags his thumb over my chin, presses against the bob of my throat. It sends an electric current to the base of my spine. “No.Confused, I think.” He laughs soullessly. “Confused that”—a breath, a blush—“you are not having us rip each other’s clothes off.”
“Is that what you want?”
He hesitates.
I lean up, pressing to his chest, his lips a warm weight above me. I hold there until his eyes slip to mine, all wide and imploring and whoever he was with before, whoever filled him with this uncertainty about the way he should be treated, they’d better hope I never meet them.
“We’re still learning each other,” I tell him. “So yeah, I’m going to make you talk, because right now, I want to be sure I’m not misreading anything. But, fuck, sweetheart”—I drag my hand up his bare arm, watching goose bumps trail my fingers—“the moment I become fluent in your shivers, it’s gonna be meteoric.”
His breath quickens, serrated pulls against his tongue, and the color of his eyes deepens to a fixating blackness that searches my face.
